For all the obvious benefits, increasing the capacity of firearm magazines has consequences. Operating with more rounds of ammunition, high capacity magazines have higher spring tensions. In double stack magazines, where the magazine funnels two columns of rounds into a single column at the feed lips, the spring force necessary to overcome the binding at the transition point is significant. In fact, the amount of force necessary to insert a round into the magazine increases with each round. This makes fully loading rounds into high capacity double stack magazines difficult. When loading multiple high capacity magazines, it is not uncommon for users to experience pain in their fingers and thumbs due to the amount of stress placed on the user's thumbs during the loading process.
Another consequence is the amount of time required to load high capacity magazines. Individually loading rounds into a magazine is a time consuming process, in and of itself. With the higher forces involved, individually loading rounds into high capacity magazines takes even longer.
Further, magazines are not universal between firearm platforms. Each magazine is designed to operatively engage the magazine well of a particular firearm platform. This means that magazines for each firearm platform has specific dimensions, shapes, and engagement features. Prior art loaders are designed to work with magazines for a single platform. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.